


Promises You Can't Keep

by MoonkistPrincess (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Friendship, Gen, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/MoonkistPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A friendship fic.<br/>Dave's brother dies. Jane finds him in the apartment, alone, and broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises You Can't Keep

There is something beautiful in loss.

It’s that for the first time, nothing in your world is beautiful anymore.  


“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.”

It’s definitely not okay, but she can’t let him say that, or he’ll…he’ll…she doesn’t want to think about it.

“It /will/ be okay. I promise. I promise, Dave.”

And as she sits on her knees and holds his hands, which hold each other and don’t so much as acknowledge her own, she wonders if he will know how much he is loved, how much he is cherished, now that his brother is gone. She wonders if he understands that the people around him are still so much in love with him, that it was not just his elder brother who carried a torch that cast the shadow that became Dave Strider.

“Don’t make me promises you can’t keep, Jane.”

She tilts her head forward and places her forehead against his mess of blonde hair, and he keeps it deeply bowed, not willing to believe she’s there. She shuts her eyes and inhales slow, taking in the smell of boy and sweat and exhaustion and then the lingering mango.

“Hush. I never break a promise.” she kisses his head and leans back, sitting down on the couch beside him and wrapping both arms tightly around his body. He’s by no means frail or fragile, but she holds him as though he is.

She rocks him to and fro to a rhythm in her head, and his posture relaxes. His knuckles fade from white to red again and his breathing evens out. He leans all the way into her touch and his hands hang limply between his knees. She lays her head on his shoulder blade and hums the tune she’s moving to, and she knows he’s crying again.

She recites words to a lullaby in her mind, and the boy becoming a man falls asleep in her arms.


End file.
